winxp - printers gone, can't add more, no shutdown or restart, norton disables itself

NyquilDriv

Junior Member
Dec 6, 1999
19
0
0
OK, here is what is going on. One of the computers in my office started having this problem. The machine is a basic athlon xp machine running WinXP. First, the printers disappeared, so I tried to add them back in, and when I clicked add printer, I got an error that said "Operation could not be completed." I also noticed that norton antivirus autoprotect was disabled in the tray. I tried to shutdown and restart, but the only option available when I clicked shutdown was log off. So, I logged off. then from the logon screen, I was able to shutdown and restart. Didn't help though. Still had all the same problems. Looked like virus/worm activity to me, so I checked what was loading at startup with msconfig, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Now, I had been having problems with the hard drive in the machine for quite some time(sometimes it would be recognized by the bios and sometimes not), so I installed a new hard drive, and installed a clean copy of WinXP and Norton. I set it up on our network, set up the printers, and everything worked great. Now about 3 weeks later, all the problems are back, and I am back where I started. The person who uses the computer is our secretary, and not too bright, so she may have installed something stupid or opened an email attachment that did this. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help!

-Spencer
 

johnjkr1

Platinum Member
Jan 10, 2003
2,124
0
0
Sounds like she has been messing with things. That is a really odd problem though, I would recommend starting over and setting her up with a guest account or something along those lines.